I found Kenilworth ivy blooming near the side door of our house on the 25th of November.

Its small size blended in with the surroundings.

The flowers measure from 5/8 inch wide to 1/4 inch front to back. The lobed leaves range from 1 inch to 1 1/4 inch. They grow on the sides of the castles in England. I’m not sure how my grandmother got hers. (I assume it’s family hand-me-down.)

The silk is so fine the web would be hard to spot if it wasn’t for the “stuff” in it. The “stuff” looks like sawdust. Woodpeckers do visit the tree and “sawdust” would fall when there was activity above … or the spider added it when spinning the web.

These three pictures of the web weren’t taken on the same day.

It was an active place when the tree was alive and producing fruit. I have no idea what’s included in the “stuff” in the line … unless it’s somehow young spiders. (They are spider egg cases.)

The pears would rot and drop when the tree was alive. The rotten fruit then attracted many, many butterflies and other insects too.

Red-spotted purple butterflies visited flowers.

The viceroy resembles a monarch, only the monarch lacks the extra black band on the hindwing.

Besides the rotten fruit, the hackberry butterflies will also visit animal droppings and carrion.

A question mark butterfly joined the hackberries. If you look close, you’ll see a faint gold upside-down question mark in the middle of its hindwing.

The buckeye butterflies have an eye spot on the top of the forewing and two spots of different sizes on their hindwing.

Buffy accompanied me out in the backyard, to walk around and see what we could see.

I must say I’ve never seen a red bird such as this one. It’s actually made of leaves, and is perched high in the pine tree in my backyard. I can’t imagine the chances of leaves “making a bird,” especially one with an eye, white eye ring, both beaks and a long tongue. Now I need a name for it. Obviously, it has to be a new species.

I couldn’t see the details in this picture from a distance, and I didn’t see them until I got the picture in the blog.